I can’t tell you what a joy it was to post last week and receive such a lot of wonderful input and enthusiasm! I think as home schooling mums we are in an ideal position to help and encourage each other.
The thread which seemed to pass through most of the comments was a focus on increased health. Lucinda shared her desire to walk more and has been having huge success, using a pedometer to count up towards 17000 steps a day. It inspired me to go and look for mine, although I think I’ll be aiming for slightly less! I loved Leah’s idea of simply moving more in her home, at the same time as getting more housework done too! One of my goals next week is to not ask one of my children to quickly fetch something from the upstairs but to jolly well do it myself! Hopefully this will all add up on the pedometer and I’ll be fit as a fiddle in no time (with a cleaner house to show for my effort). Jo is also focusing on walking more regardless of the cold weather she is experiencing at the moment. Both Audria and Phyllis have written wibbly wobbly posts, with Audria losing 1Ib last week and declaring that everything is awesome (love it Audria!) whilst Phyllis shared her extensive knowledge about her research into food which prevent a fluctuating blood sugar (this is such a good informative post and well worth the read).
Many of us are focusing on thinking more positively towards ourselves and our bodies, with Francis sharing a wonderful video on just this subject. Parts of the video show many beautiful women passing negative judgement on their bodies, and yet at the end a woman confined to wheel chair, when asked what she thought of her body, stated that it was soft and luscious. It brought tears to my eyes. Ladies, this is the answer we should all be giving in response to that question. Take a look for yourself:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/14/embrace-taryn-brumfitt_n_5318178.html
There have been many victories with Deidre losing 2Ib, and Christy celebrating not putting on any weight despite a tough week. Lovely Ticia is also joining us and celebrating not snacking as much, whilst my good friend Donna is taking small but determined steps towards better health. I am incredibly happy to say that my husband Gary is also joining us and has been to the gym twice this week and played badminton with our older three children. He has noticeably lost weight over the past couple of weeks, totalling 4Ibs. Well done to you all!
Thank you all so much for contributing. I find I am thinking of you throughout the week and willing you all on in your pursuit of a healthier life. As for me, I have walked the hour back from the leisure centre four times this week, tried skimmed milk (yuk, never again!) and eating my lunch a bit later to negate the need for a snack before my walk. I have also been drinking stacks of water which has led to a phenomenal decrease in my appetite. I am currently learning to differentiate between thirst and hunger! I have lost 2 and 1/4 Ibs which brings my total to 14 and 1/4 Ibs. I have not noticed any difference at all to my size (!) even though I have lost over 14 of these:
I wanted to include this, because a 1 Ib weight loss is A LOT!!
The reason I am unable to notice it, I think, is because I have exactly 100 of those handfuls to lose! Actually, I now have 85 and 3/4 of them to lose….
We can do this!!
So over to you, how have you all done this week? What are your victories? -Big or small, I’d love to hear them and would be honoured to pray for you this week.
I have lost a lot of weight over the last few years (I’m now between 17 and 20kg lighter than my highest plateau weight, which was about three years ago) but I can only really tell when I look at photographs of myself back then, and now. There aren’t many of them, so I’m always surprised when I spot one and see the difference. I suspect you’d find the same thing – and likewise, you don’t have many photos of yourself!
Incidentally, what made the difference for me was becoming vegan. Cutting out dairy meant the weight just fell off. I also exercise more than I used to, but that was the biggest factor I think.
Well done May! Gosh, that’s over three stone, you must feel so much better! I can imagine giving up dairy would significantly decrease my calorie intake, I’d be hard pushed to actually see it through! I’m a bit partial to all things dairy! I could definitely give up meat though, having been a vegetarian for many years before I got married. Gary is a huge meat eater and I’m waaaaay too lazy to cook more than one meal at a time!
I think I have confused myself, I surely can’t have lost more than three stone. I think I lost a stone and a half, maybe two stone? Anyway it was quite a lot fairly quickly. I miss dairy a lot sometimes but I don’t miss the way I felt after eating it and I feel better ethically as a vegan 🙂 Good luck with your loss, perhaps you could just cut back on dairy a little to see if you can cope, like maybe replace milk with soya milk sometimes?
I used to be so bad at asking my kids to go get something out of another room or from the basement. Doing those little errands myself was one of the ways that I worked on getting in enough movement each day in the early days of my weight loss. Now, most of the time, I’ll go get whatever it is myself. Sometimes, I have to catch myself, though, as I’m asking one of them to do something and remind myself to do it myself.
It may be different in your part of the world, but here a tub of butter is a pound (except now that they’re trying to shave off an ounce and still charge the same price!). I would never let myself feel guilty about “only” losing a pound because that’s a whole tub of butter’s worth of fat that’s no longer on my body.
Our butter I think comes in grams rather than pounds. I am still blown away that I have lost 14 of them and I can’t notice it at all!! What’s that all about?!
Thank you for the mention and the encouragement. You are awesome.
Thank you so much for joining in Phyllis, it is 100% more ‘funner’ with everyone else on board too!
I’ve been doing a bit more reading on healthy things to eat. Interestingly enough the reading I’ve found says skim milk isn’t necessarily better for you, and eliminating all fats may not be the right answer. So, I’m reading to find out more.
I also need to work on moving around more, plus side while talking to a friend this weekend I worked on cleaning our upstairs, and I now have my van loaded up with stuff to take to Salvation Army.
I’m very glad to hear it! Skimmed milk was revolting, it’s semi-skimmed all the way for me! And yay for tidying and talking at the same time!!
Thank you for this encouraging post! I loved reading about everyone’s success this week. I wish my husband would join with us too! https://storyland4.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/wibbly-wobbly-weightloss-surprised-by-success/
Well done on your weight loss, Audria! And thank you so much for posting, it’s fantastic to read about how you are doing!
I have another post, this time on protein. Hope you enjoy my ramblings.
http://bergblog-onthemend.blogspot.com/2014/07/wibbly-wobbly-weight-loss-living_5.html
I’m popping over now to have a read. Thank you so much, Phyllis, for posting along side me and sharing your knowledge with us all!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has a tendency to send the children for things I could get up and get myself – a habit I think I picked up while holding nursing or sleeping infants, and should have let go of years ago 🙂
I love the video. You know it’s funny, I always thought my mother was heavy, because she was continually dieting, and fretting about her weight. Now as an adult looking back at pictures of her while I was growing up – she was beautiful, and quite trim. I’d like my girls to remember me as comfortable in my own skin, and happy as I am – but striving to be healthy.
That’s a great goal Leah. I think my mum was the same. She was always on a diet of some sort or another and would never ever taste any of my cooking growing up because it had too many calories. I too want to reach a happy medium between health and enjoyment of just being who God created me to be. I have enormous size 8 1/2 feet so I’m thinking probably I was born to be a little on the large size!
Wow! I am so impressed you walked all that way to the leisure centre!! At the weekends I love walking the dogs on the beach for hours – a lovely little coffee shop half way (& a great audiobook on my phone) helps. But in the week, when I am trying to fit so much into my day, I have to really make the effort to fit in extra walking. Having said that, I haven’t really been trying to lose weight and yet I have, thanks to all the walking – so my body obviously likes it!
Everyone’s different, but for what it’s worth, it was Paul McKenna’s book (I Can Make You Thin) that helped me lose the baby weight after I had J(9). If you can get past the self-aggrandising title it really works. (He was one of my hypnosis trainers. He’s a sweetie really. ;-))
You’ve created something so special here, Claire. Thank you.
I laughed when I read your recommendation of Paul McKenna. When I was in my teens we went to watch him live in Croydon and I was one of the (un) fortunate ones to be called up on the stage and was hypnotised very successfully and did many, many peculiar things!! Such good fun!
Thank you for the encouragement. It’s great to have you around!
Well done to everyone. I agree with lucinda, this is fantastic. Thanks Claire
This week i went for a jog. I haven’t been running for years!!!
I used to run before I got married but became like a preverbial pig in muck when I got married – very happy to snuggle with Gary, watching tv and munching on goodies! Well done on going for that jog! One day….
I think our July 4th holiday put me off, but when your son makes a cobbler all by himself and cooks it in the dutch oven outside, well, it must be eaten. and eaten. and eaten. Slow and steady…
I agree whole-heartedly!
Oh, me too! My mum was always on a diet and never would taste any of my ‘culinary delights’ as a child. I’m sure your son will very much appreciate your choice!